


All Roads Lead

by thedevilchicken



Category: Practical Magic (1998)
Genre: F/M, Getting Together, Post-Canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 17:25:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16330397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: The last time Gary came back to the island, he never left.





	All Roads Lead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [noxelementalist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/noxelementalist/gifts).



The last time Gary came back to the island, he never left. 

Tuscon seemed a very long way away, Sally thought. It would have felt like a whole world away to her younger self, the one who'd cast the spell that night so she'd never have a broken heart; she'd thought no one like the person she'd described could exist on the face of the planet, but existing all the way out there in Arizona would have maybe been the next best thing.

It seemed like a really, really long way away. And he moved that really, really long way to be with her, or at least to try to be. 

It was after he'd moved - a trial, they called it, since all he'd done was take a leave of absence from his job and ask his sister to stop by his place to feed his cat - that she realized she had no real idea who he was outside the feeling she had. Sure, he liked stars and he had two different colored eyes, but what did she _know_ about him? He'd investigated Jimmy Angelov and he'd let her off the hook for the awful thing she'd never meant to do, he liked the shampoo she made for the store (though he still wasn't sure about the price) and magic didn't seem to faze him very much, but what did any of that really mean? 

So, they dated. He rented a room in the boarding house just till they could figure out what it was that was happening between them, and they talked, and they went out for dinner though the girls both pleaded for him to come visit the aunts' house. Possibly, however, that had something to do with the prospect of pancakes, looming so large Sally could almost see them in their eyes. Gillian even promised not to mix spelled herbs into the syrup, bless her heart.

Three weeks passed, and they were seeing each other almost every day, and she liked him, and maybe she loved him, but maybe that was just the spell. Gary put in his notice with his job back west and Sally felt nervous when he told her he was doing it, but she didn't tell him not to. She guessed she'd hoped he would. She wanted him to stay, whatever that meant about the situation. But how could she be sure?

"You know you _can_ be sure," Gilly told her, one night. It was a full moon outside the kitchen window, hanging low over the water, but there were no rings around it this time and definitely no blood at all. 

"Will I like what you have in mind," Sally asked, narrowing her eyes suspiciously, "or is this like the time you wanted to see how many brownies we could eat before we threw up in the greenhouse?" 

"Hey now, you can't blame that on me!" Gilly said. "I mean, not entirely. But anyway, it's nothing like that. I promise. Cross my heart and hope to..." She paused, apparently rethinking the word she'd been about to utter. Considering their recent luck with magic, Sally couldn't say she blamed her, though it kind of ruined the effect. "You know, get a really bad head cold. Or a hangover. The kind where the room just spins and spins and spins and you really wish you hadn't had that last shot of tequila." 

"Sometimes I think living with you _is_ that last shot of tequila," Sally grumbled. "But okay. Okay, Gilly, I'll bite. How can I be sure?"

Gillian smiled, mysteriously and mischievously, the way she's always been really, really good at. "We'll need the book," she said. "And that tequila I was talking about."

Sally groaned. One way or another, she figured the hangover was coming. 

\---

When she slept that night, she dreamed a dream that almost seemed real. 

She was expecting it, kind of, but it still took her by surprise how everything was at the verge of being right but wasn't, too. The sky wasn't the right shade of blue and the grass in the aunts' garden wasn't the right shade of green. The mugwort was where the rosemary should be. The candlestick she'd broken back in junior high wasn't even cracked. 

There was no one in the house but she guessed maybe it was a school day, so she headed out and down the street and made the walk into town. Crystal waved at her from the front window of the store as she passed it by, so she waved back. And, as she walked, she realized she knew where she was heading; she turned into the diner down at the end of the street by the harbor and as the bell chimed at the door, there he was, sitting at the table with a cup of coffee and a newspaper in front of him. She slipped into the seat opposite. He smiled. 

"Tell me again how she met," she said, as she stole his coffee to take a sip then warm her hands, and when he raised his brows at her, she said, "Just humor me, okay?"

"It was college," he said, and he shrugged, and he sat back in his seat. "I mean, you were in college, at least. I was there on some wild goose chase case and I saw you across the street on your way to class and I thought, wow, y'know, she could stop traffic." He leaned forward on his elbows on the tabletop and he snagged back his coffee. "Only it turned out you didn't stop traffic, and I wound up in the hospital with a dislocated shoulder and two broken ribs."

"Was I worth it?"

He shrugged. He smiled. "Well, I guess so," he said, "considering how I've been here ten years now and change." 

She smiled, When she woke, she was still smiling. 

When she slept the next night, she dreamed again. Again, nothing seemed to be quite real. 

The air seemed thicker and the soles of her shoes too thin, and her hair had never been so long before as it was then, hanging in a braid over her shoulder. Sara's car was blue instead of red. Gilly had a piercing shining in her navel. The girls were reading Jane Eyre for class and not Wuthering Heights. 

Gillian said she'd keep an eye on the girls, who were trying really hard to light the candles on the mantelpiece by blowing on them, and Sally slipped out of the back door. She knew where she was going because it was the same place as before; she walked down the street in the too-yellow sunlight and she waved to Crystal working in the store. She opened the diner door to the chime of the bell and she sat herself down at the table. 

"Tell me again how we met," she said, as she snagged his coffee again and took a sip. "Just humor me, okay?"

He folded his newspaper as he sat back and said, "Well, I was minding my aunt's used book store back in Tuscon." He held out his hand for the coffee cup and Sally passed it back with an almost but not quite apologetic look. "You were on your way out to LA to see your sister and your plane had to make a stop, because of lightning or high winds or something like that. Then it got cancelled and the next thing I knew, the most beautiful girl I ever saw walked right on in and asked if we had any crime novels in stock, the trashier the better. And I said I didn't know because I don't think my aunt ever saw an organizational system she didn't just hate like it wronged her in her past life, but I said maybe I could tell you a story or two, if you had the time." He smiled. He shrugged. "We talked all afternoon and you missed your flight. Now here I am."

"Do you miss Tuscon?" she asked. 

"Not as much as I'd miss you if I went back," he replied. 

She smiled. And, when she woke up, she was still smiling. 

When she slept the next night, she dreamed again, one final time. Somehow, the not-quite-reality seemed to bother her a little less. 

She walked into the diner and she sat down at his table, and she reached across to steal his coffee. As she took a sip, he looked at her, half smile and half frown. 

"Tell me again how we met," she said, and he laughed as he sat back, bewildered. 

"Just now," he replied. "Right here. You just walked in and stole my coffee." And Sally almost spat the next mouthful straight out as she realized exactly what it was she'd done. 

"Did you think maybe I was someone else?" he asked, and he looked at her like it was a possibility she might have lost her mind, but like maybe he didn't mind that. 

"No, I thought you were you," she replied. "I just thought we'd met before, that's all." She glanced down at the coffee in her hands and she screwed up her face. "I'm sorry, I don't usually go around snatching people's tasty caffeinated beverages. Can I get you another? I promise I'll let you drink it yourself."

He pushed back his seat and stood. "Let me," he said, and he came back a couple of minutes later with two fresh cups. All the time he was away, he'd kept on glancing back.

He was in town on business, he told her, or at least that was the story; he'd gotten lost on his way up to Boston and decided to make the most of it with a room for the night before he got back on the road. He was an agent from Tuscon with a badge and a gun and he kept looking at her oddly, like he maybe couldn't look away. She told him she owned a botanical store and she had two kids and sometimes she practised witchcraft, and he looked at her like maybe he believed her, somehow, though she knew it sounded really strange. 

When she said she'd better leave, he asked her out to dinner. When she said she wasn't sure, she didn't mean it. When they kissed outside the door, in the chime of the bell, she knew. 

She woke with a smile, and she knew. She was sure. 

In other realities, where she'd never cast the spell, they'd still met.

\---

That morning, she woke with a hangover roughly the size and shape of Arizona and she swallowed down a tonic that Aunt Frances made that tasted a lot like slightly perfumed dirt. The way she winked at Kylie and Antonia, she wasn't completely sure it wasn't, but it worked a whole lot faster than the aspirin ever would have. 

Once the girls were out of the house on the way to school, she meant to go to the store and spend the day in the back room mixing herbs into new stock. She didn't. She went to the coffee shop instead, and she went inside. She drank his coffee at the table and he let her. Then she stood and she beckoned and she led him away. 

He was still renting a room in the boarding house back then, the one they'd gone to that first time he'd come out to the island. There were no photographs strewn over the bed that day. Sally could only think how convenient that was when she pulled him down. She could only think how sometimes good things come from bad and love sweeps in when you least expect it. When she kissed him, and he kissed her back, she was sure that that was what it was. When he touched her, she knew; maybe she hadn't needed magic for that after all.

In the weeks that followed, he made choices. People expected that he'd put in an application with the sheriff's office, or maybe with the state police, or at least something in law enforcement like he'd been before, but he didn't. Everyone else seemed surprised but Sally caught herself smiling to herself as she cleaned the dishes after dinner. Once he'd decided to stay, he bought himself the stable they’d all thought was going to have to close when the previous owner had moved away. He taught kids to ride and he looked after the horses and sure, so maybe he’d never be rich, but Sally thought he seemed happy. 

In the weeks that followed, he moved out of the boarding house and into a small rented place with a kitchen he made pancakes in on the mornings when the girls stopped by. And, in the months that followed, they bought a place together not far from the aunts' house. They lived together with the girls and Gary's old black cat, another Arizonan import that they agreed that they should keep, like him. 

The last time Gary came back to the island, he never left. If he had, Sally knew she would have followed, because in the end they'd never needed the spell at all.


End file.
